APRIL 10, MONDAY

APRIL 10, MONDAY

GOING

My friend Nick Royal, who with his wife Ruth, hosted me in Santa Cruz last summer during my Amtrak tour of the United States just asked me for the address of Going, the website I use to find cheap airline flights. Since it relates to my travels during the last year I am including it here as a daily post.

Dear Nick,

Somewhere I’ve written a description of Scott’s Cheap Tickets, now renamed Going at Going.com. But I can’t find it so I’ll start over.

Scott Keyes has written a book on cheap airline travel titled, “Take More Vacations,” on line at Amazon. In it he answers most questions about airline ticket pricing and explains why there are occasional very cheap flights. He even deals with the ethics of flying and the carbon pollution this causes with the argument that the less you pay the less your encourage airlines to add capacity and the smaller your carbon imprint. My brother has suddenly turned righteous (with good reason) and says he won’t fly which limits the travel he can do. This book counters his arguments a little bit, but that said, on my recent trip I personally was responsible for a ton of carbon. The real problem for me is the Atlantic Ocean and how far away India is. I saw the United States last summer by Amtrak, but I can’t avoid flying if I want to travel beyond the USA.

There are a number of reasons airlines suddenly lower prices for a day or two. These have to do more with competition between airlines than an attempt to fill empty seats, but reduced ticket prices do happen briefly and with regularity.

Every day I get a notice from Going about a cheap flight somewhere, usually within a time range of two to four months and usually about four months in advance. Almost always the offer comes with the notice that this price will only last a day or two, sometimes only a few hours. This notice will connect you with Google Flights, which offers the best information on flights. All Going really does is constantly search the Internet for cheap flights and notify you when it finds one from an airport near you. After that on Google Flights you are on your own. If you have a premium subscription as I do to Going, which costs about $50 a year, you are paying for this search and this instant notice. But I could never find these cheap flights on my own so the $50 is worth it for me.

To make maximum use of Going you almost need to be retired and need to be willing to go anywhere that a cheap ticket pops up a narrow time range. The secret is to take what comes when it comes. Of course, most people want to go to a certain place at a certain time, the more particular you are the less likely you will find a cheap ticket. If you are willing to go anywhere in Europe and take the train or EasyJet from a random European city your chances are pretty good of getting the approximate place and time of your choice in Europe. I am now planning to go to Tuscany for October plus another month and am fairly certain that I will find a cheap flight to Italy or somewhere close at that time. I want to go to Sri Lanka in January and am almost certain that no cheap ticket will appear for that time. The cheapest ticket I’ve seen round trip to Sri Lanka is $700 round trip from Raleigh a year ago, which is a four hour drive away. An additional problem for me is that Asheville is not a major hub and most offers I get are from Charlotte or Atlanta. You are lucky, you are near a major city and so will get a lot more offers and easy trip to the airport.

The cheapest flight I was able to get on Going this last year was $375 round trip from Asheville to Barcelona, but one that I finally didn’t make use of because of Covid. But it is fairly easy to get a round trip to somewhere in Europe for $500. My round trip Asheville to Paris was $475 and paid for by bonus points on my United card. But lately the prices have gone up about $100. Yet most often if you wait and get a ticket to Europe two months in advance the cost will be $1000 to $1200 so $500 is a good deal. The guy sitting next to you will likely have paid $1200.

So the way to get the most out of Going is to have a list of about a dozen places you would like to fly to and then when one comes up at a good price book a flight and go there.

Scott’s advice is to take a number of short trips a year rather than one long trip. To make these short trips possible you need to cut flight costs. To get the most out of Airbnb’s and to reduce other costs it is best to get an Airbnb for a month at a highly discounted rate and to see one place at a time. This is also the easiest way for an old person to travel. And in a month not too much can go wrong so you can go with a basic ticket. (My AARP supplemental plan F pays for medical expenses when abroad so I don’t get medical insurance.)

The key to booking a cheap flight when an offer appears is to instantly, within the hour, book the flight and note the time you did it. With any airlines you are given 24 hours in which to cancel without charge. I’ve done this several times and it is reliable.

After you have booked the flight is the time to figure out whether this is right for you and to not dither around wondering if this is where and when you want to go for hours because the cheap price will likely vanish. If someone else is going with you you have to check with them. And then within the 24 hours you either keep the flight or cancel it.

I almost always book the basic flight with no checked luggage, no seat choice, no changes possible, nothing extra. And the airlines will always offer an upgrade to regular economy with all these options for an extra $150. So to go basic you need to be able to resist this offer and to fit everything into a carryon bag, which I have found quite easy to do, with half my bag being digital equipment and half clothes and necessities. This makes carrying your luggage when you get there much easier but means you can’t buy anything on the way. You can of course buy almost anything you need or have forgotten when you get there which makes packing light easier. (I can also carry about twenty pounds of digital stuff in my vest if the airlines gets picky about weight.)

One possible way around the no change feature of the basic ticket is that if the airlines changes your flight times by only a few hours in the time before you fly, you are offered either a refund or a free flight time change. I used an airline required flight change when I flew to Greece for a month to adding Germany for a month and flying back from Hanover at no extra cost. I also used it when I went to Paris for a month to change to flying back from London after an additional two weeks. Of course you can’t count on the airlines changing your flight times, but this does give some flexibility.

I have also discovered that generally you can get away with a larger carry on bag than allowed and a larger personal bag (I have a small backpack) than allowed. But you can’t count on this and might have to pay for a checked bag. If you buy the ticket with the airlines credit card, a United flight paid for by a United Card (the United card came with 50,000 points, or a free flight to Paris, which was my reason for getting it for a free flight to Paris in the first place) then you get a free checked bag.

On this last trip I paid for economy tickets because I thought on a two and a half month trip something could go wrong, which it did, I came down with what I thought was a serious prostate problem which made me delay my departure. So I immediately changed my Finnair ticket from Paris to Delhi so that I wouldn’t lose it, and then when I was cleared within days to go, I changed it again. Sure enough, there was no change fee, but the cheap $700 ticket that I had bought months before for this new date had now doubled to $1400, and I had to pay this doubled price. I might have been just as well off to have gotten a basic ticket to begin with, have lost that money, and have searched for a low cost ticket on some other airline to India. Airlines play on your fears that something will go wrong. I think it is probably better to self insure with the likelihood that nothing will go wrong and then eat the added cost if something does.

So this is the long, long answer to your short question. The short answer is sign up with Going and enter the airport that you want to fly from. Then every day check your email and when you see a flight to a place where you want to go immediately book your ticket and within 24 hours decide if that is what you want or cancel the booking. You might still in those 24 hours sign up for new dates. Do that first before cancelling the first booking, which you can always do in case the dates you want to change to are no longer available.

And if you never fly using Going the daily offers and the dreams they inspire are worth $50 a year. I was signed up with Scott’s Cheap Flights for several years before flying on a whim became possible and I enjoyed looking at exotic possibilities all of that time. When I was free to fly Greece popped for $550. I waited ten minutes and booked a ticket. Going to Greece had never crossed my mind. But I had a marvelous time. And once I got in the swing of things and realized how easy it was, I was off and running.

One caveat to all of this. I’ve discovered that the big cost of travel is accomodations, not flight costs. And the big additional cost there is eating out. Yet even in expensive Holland groceries were no more expensive than in Asheville. An airbnb allows you to get fresh or readymade food at grocery stores and to heat it up yourself. So an inexpensive Airbnb is the real key to cheap travel. Airbnbs are much cheaper by the month than by the day which is a reason to stay in one place for a month. Another way to cut the Airbnb cost is to share it with a couple of friends who want to travel with you and are willing to share the cost, in the case of this last trip, my daughter and her husband. Or an even better way, which I haven’t done yet is to either exchange houses or rent yours out while you are gone and pay for your trip with the rent money.

Any questions, just let me know. So hi to Ruth for me and thanks again for a marvelous time last summer with the two of you. I’ve also learned from you and others that I have the best time in a new place if I have friends to show me around.

Yours, Bill

Link to GOING: https://goingwith.me/2mex2tpe